On our trip to Maine we passed by a used bookstore that had a
fairly complete collection of old "Life" magazines for sale.
Since I was going to see family members soon I picked up the
issues that were on the newsstands when each of the three of us
siblings were born and the issue when Evelyn was born. I believe
they followed the convention that the magazine was on the
newsstand until the date on the magazine was reached, then it was
replaced by the next issue. That means I got for myself the May
22, 1950, issue, having been born the 17th. (Actually, I find
most people my age were born on May 17th.) The whole magazine is
a time capsule of attitudes, particularly the ads.

The front cover is the Duke of Windsor. At this time he was held
in some esteem. Supposedly he was King of England and had
abdicated in 1936 for love, as the romantic version of the story
went. I believe the common opinion these days is that he
abdicated more for sympathy. It was sympathy for Germany, I
believe. These days even the romantic story is besmirched. There
is a new film coming out exploring the possibility that Wallis
Simpson, the Duchess, had an affair with another man.

Perhaps the most striking change in attitudes one notices in how
women's place in society has changed. I open the first page. One
ad for Kelvinator shows a happy housewife in an apron. I don't
remember the last time I saw a current ad with a picture of a
housewife. The fact that we have housewives in this country has
become something of a dirty little secret. However, this was a
time when there were few nations in which families could get by
with just one breadwinner. We could. Now that time is pretty
much gone. It is not always true today but it is assumed that
both adults in a family will be bringing in income, more or less
like it was in other nations in 1950. Then again, this was a time
when maintaining a house was probably a 40-hour a week job.

Another ad shows a woman joyfully holding her new broom.
"4,000,000 women switch to Perma-broom. Electrene Bristles pick
up dirt by Magnetic Action as you sweep." Wow! That's science.
A smaller picture shows the woman with a whiskbroom brushing off
her husband. (I get the brush-off occasionally, but not like
this.) And for only fifty cents you can get a smaller Perma-
broomette for your daughter. I figure the little girl is just
about the right age that she will get involved in the Women's
Liberation movement when it comes along.

Then there is an ad for Birds Eye Quick Frozen Frying Chicken. It
has a little comic strip showing a success story of frying
chicken. The title of the strip is "Suzie serves up a Smooth
Quickie!" It starts out with Husband telling Susie, "Now, Susie,
I want you to have fun tonight, too. So PLEASE plan something
that won't keep you in the kitchen all evening." And Susie
responds "For gosh sake! What can you serve that's good that
doesn't take time?" The Birds Eye Chicken, hero of the comic
strip, says, "I'll tell you." The chicken then tells her to serve
chicken. I am reminded of the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"
steer bred to want to be eaten. "Have you considered my liver?"
the steer asks. If it sounds like the woman is oppressed, think
about that chicken. Still, the strip ends up with the guest
couple praising "the tastiest chicken I ever sailed into" over a
hand of bridge. Clearly in the 1950s there was much more of an
attitude that there was a proper role for everybody in society and
you fit into that role no matter how much it hurt. There is less
consideration for the feelings of the woman twice called "Susie"
and once "Suzie." They are clearly paying a lot of attention to
Susie.

At least two ads are for alarm clocks. They are brands I have
never heard of. One is for Telechron and one for Sessions. If
you want to succeed you have to be to work on time.

Another ad is for Ipana Toothpaste. I wonder what happened to
Ipana? I remember they used to advertise it to kids with their
mascot Bucky Beaver. As the kid with an overbite I took my share
of flak over Bucky Beaver.

Molle has shave cream in a toothpaste-like tube or a jar. There
is a big ad showing Betty Hutton as Annie Oakley in MGM's ANNIE
GET YOUR GUN. That had a recent revival on Broadway.

Some ads are strange just because of wording that would come along
later. There is an ad for two kinds of green giant canned corn.
You can get it with just the corn or Mexican style with limp red
and green pepper pieces. As the ad says, "Some like it natural.
Some like it gay." Ouch.

Page 104 has an ad for products that use dextrose corn sweeteners.
A big dish of canned grapefruit slices is shown with a cherry on
top. It is being tapped by a woman with what looks like a magic
wand. She is wearing a brief drum majorette costume trimmed in
red, white, and blue stripes. She appears to be wearing an Uncle
Sam top hat. Sex, patriotism, and magic to sell products with
corn sweeteners.

Ah, the Borden ad. The ad shows a domestic scene of parents
sitting around a house while the teenagers cavort to music on the
record player. Only this is not a human family it is bovine.
There is a cow and bull and two calves, drawn like humans. In the
foreground is Elsie the cow in an apron. I will just quote:

"What happens to teen-agers when they grow up?" puzzled Elsie, the
Borden Cow.

"You heard me, woman!" bellowed Elmer the bull. "What kind of men
and women will these jitterbugs turn out to be?"

"About the same kind their fathers and mothers turned out to be,"
smiled Elsie. "Remember where we met, dear? . . . at a Charleston
contest!"

"I wonder if we were as practical as the new generation?" mused
Elsie. "I know they're wiser about eating what's good for them.
Look at the way Beulah's gang goes for those nutritious sandwiches
I make with Borden's Chive Wej-Cuts!"

"They stoke up to get more pep to jitterbug!" sneered Elmer.

Well, it goes on but that's enough of that. I think old Elsie and
Elmer have a few rude shocks coming when they see what teenagers
will be like in the 1950s. And the 1960s. Come to think about it
they also have a few rude shocks coming about what happens when
dairy cattle get old. Let's put it this way. I wonder if Elsie
has ever asked herself why there are no graveyards around for
deceased dairy cattle.

And the back cover there is an opera singer with a cigarette in
her hand. "NOTED THROAT SPECIALISTS REPORT on a 30-Day Test of
Camel Smokers... Not one single case of throat irritation due to
smoking Camels! Yes these were the findings of noted throat
specialists after a total of 2,470 weekly examinations of the
throats of hundreds of men and women who smoked Camels--and only
Camels--for 30 consecutive days."

"Metropolitan Opera Star Nadine Connor: 'When I smoke, I have to
think of my voice. I made the Camel 30-Day Mildness Test. It
proved Camels agree with my throat. They're mild and they taste
so good!'"

Now where would you go to find 2470 exclusive Camel smokers? They
probably went to the R. J. Reynolds home office in Winston-Salem,
NC. (Some day I must tell about my adventures in that building on
Strike Duty.) "Does anyone here want to report an irritated
throat? Nobody? Okay, back to work. (Writes) No throat
irritation."

I did my usual periodic "comfort reading" recently of the "Charing
Cross Road" trilogy. This comprises Helene Hanff's "84 Charing
Cross Road". "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street", and "Q's Legacy".
The first is the most familiar, particularly to me, since I listen
to it on audiotape frequently. (For those unfamiliar with these
books, Hanff was a scriptwriter in New York who struck up a
correspondence with an antiquarian bookshop in London while trying
to find English literature not in print in the United States. The
second is about her experiences after the first one made her
famous, and the third is about how she discovered a lot of this
literature in the first place, from Arthur Quiller-Couch's
writing.)

But something has always bothered me. In her first letter, Hanff
says she encloses a list of her "most pressing needs." The reply
says, "In reply to your letter of October 5th, we have managed to
clear up two-thirds of your problem. The three Hazlitt essays you
want are contained in the Nonesuch Press edition of his 'Selected
Essays' and the Stevenson is found in 'Virginibus Puerisque' . . .
. The Leigh Hunt essays are not going to be so easy . . . . We
haven't the Latin Bible you describe . . . ."

What I can't figure out is how Marks & Co figured they had solved
two-thirds of her problem. It appears she requested three Hazlitt
essays, a Stevenson essay, some Leigh Hunt essays, and a Latin
Bible. And they sent back the Hazlitt and the Stevenson. If you
could all the essays for a given author as one request, they
"cleared up" half her problem. If you count the essays
separately, they sent her four items (three Hazlitt essays and a
Stevenson), meaning two were left. But clearly there is more than
one Leigh Hunt essay, so this can't be it either.

I know that the answer is that they weren't being mathematically
precise, or maybe the Bible didn't count for some reason, but the
mathematician in me finds it irksome.

On my business trip to Swindon in 2000, I managed to find Quiller-
Couch's anthologies of English and Victorian verse in nice
editions in Ludlow, quite reasonably priced. And I just recently
ordered his book on writing. Hanff talks about reading one of his
books--possible that one--and getting stuck very early because he
assumed his readers had read Milton. So she went off to read
Milton, only to discover that *he* assumed his readers were
familiar with Biblical books such as Isaiah and Ezekiel. Computer
types will understand when I say that Hanff found herself pushing
more and more onto the stack. [-ecl]